


whispers of returning

by sosojiwa



Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: (chapter two), Angst, F/F, Flashbacks, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Holidays, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, Suicide, This was rushed, Useless Lesbians, even though its mid janurary, melchior is wack, written last month
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-13 16:51:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17491682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sosojiwa/pseuds/sosojiwa
Summary: two holiday drabbles my mind churned out a day or two before christmas for my ex. the first consists of ilse and wendla spending the holidays together, the second consisting of melchior spending another christmas alone and wishing he wasn’t.i swear, it’s better than the summary makes it sound, but not as cool as the title makes it seem.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is the nice soft chapter with ilse and wendla :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi guys my friend pressured me into matching @s on insta with him in the form of those, like, “if found return to ____” “im _____” shirts but with melchior and moritz, so life is pretty schmancy.
> 
> anyway, enjoy!!

She always liked the holiday season.

There was just something so whimsical, so magical to her in the idea of heading to town with her beloved mother to carol with the other townsfolk and do last minute shopping for family distant and close as well as for friends near and dear. She would always laugh along gleefully with the children dancing around in their layers and thermal shoes, tossing snowballs at one another without a care in the world and giggling all the while.

“Alle Jahre wieder! Kommt das Christuskind!” she would sing gleefully with the group of people formed in the centre of the town. Sometimes, she would find some of her friends there in the cluster of people, and she would opt to stand beside them and smile a little broader and stand a little taller as their voices mended with those around them. The holiday season truly was, she decided, wonderful in its ways of bringing people closer together.

She would giggle in the presence of the tall-haired boy who would shuffle around all too much, finding discomfort in being so close to so many other people and eventually resorting to squeezing her hand while he sang along, occasionally letting his nerves best him, resulting in the lyrics to the song to fall from his lips incorrectly, a swear slipping from his lips; she found herself slightly unsettled, yet, comforted by the presence of the arrogant blonde beside her (“Mama told me to be wary of you, though I cannot see why— you really do seem quite delightful!”) and the way he would teasingly use her shoulders as his own personal armrest whilst his voice was lost in the sea of those around them.

Her eyes were set aflame whenever the lanky Robel boy would pull her close to him to shield her from the cold and mean nothing more through his touch than a strange, comforting sense of sibling-esque love while they sway back and forth to the sound of their own cheerful voices; she would grin the widest in the few times she was around the long-haired noirette girl, fingers carefully laced with hers as they gently moved along to the carols, their flowy dresses swishing in the wind in due to their movements (the both of them would always get showered in tender compliments when they found themselves done with singing for the day, so she found her to be best to sing beside). 

(Not once had she found herself next to him, for he would always busy himself with excuses to not join in the festivities, or was seen walking to a store or two, presumably to pick up items his mother had forgotten to get for the dish she would make later in the day.)

“Ilse!” she called out gleefully one morning in her usual stroll down Main Street with her mother, face immediately brightening up at the sight of her friend. The girl perked up at the calling of her name and smiled softly, clutching at her dress as she came running to her. Instinctively, the brunette turned to her mother for approval to go off and spend the day with her friend. With a sigh and a wish to be careful and stay safe in the harsh weather, she sent her daughter off to tend to her best friend.

“Ilse, what would I ever do without you? Look at how gorgeous it is out here with the fresh, falling snow the Lord has bestowed upon us!” she exclaimed cheerfully, causing her friend to laugh at her enthusiasm, “I wonder what we could do today— perhaps we could head over to the Rilow household and play dress up with Thea and Hänsi? Or maybe we could have a nice lunch out at the nice restaurant Herr Müller just opened? Mama did give me some of her pocket change yesterday evening…” 

As the brunette trailed off to both catch her breath and think of more ideas, Ilse interjected, “Wendla, I do see you are quite excited for the holidays! But, perhaps we could go on a walk instead and simply enjoy how the snow changes the scenery so familiar to us, and possibly even do some of the things you mentioned when all is well and done?”

“Clever girl! I suppose that’s what we can do today,” chirped Wendla happily in response, beaming at her friend for being able to suggest an idea that sounded so wonderful. The noirette’s face became painted in a few lovely shades of red at the compliment before she extended a hand to her friend, glancing around. “Shall we get going, then? The skies won’t stay light all day, you know,” she said with a smile, heart fluttering slightly in her chest when Wendla laced her fingers in hers and began to walk.

The air was crisp and bitter to their noses, stinging them each time they dared to take a breath, though they couldn’t find it within themselves to care about how the harsh weather decided to treat their developing bodies. As they wandered farther and farther from the centre of the town, the sounds of the happy holiday carols grew increasingly quiet to their ears, louder grew the sounds of their own voices and the sound of whatever wildlife remained. Their lips grew chapped and dry in due to the startling cold but also in due to the words they spoke, which were contrastingly airy and without a care in the world.

They spoke in fascination of the appearances of the barren trees above their heads and the occasional shriek of a bird left behind by its family. They spoke warmly of the festivities they had planned for the week and murmured wishes for the other to spend the holiday with them. They shifted their tones of voices and imitated some of the people they knew, standing on the tip of their toes and slouching their shoulders to imitate the stature of the tall-haired boy, or walking along with a sense of arrogance with voices filled with the best egotistical air they could muster in an attempt to mock the Rilow boy. They allowed giggles and laughs to glide from their lips whenever one of them would trip and fall over an odd tree root or slip on a thin layer of ice, the other immediately flocking over to help them up.

They only found themselves lost in the nature surrounding them for a few moments longer, for Wendla had paused at a tall oak which overlooked the mostly-frozen lake they would sometimes venture to, both by their lonesome and in the company of friends. She slid onto the snow-dusted ground with a heavy breath, eyes fluttering shut as she moved a shaky hand to pat the ground beside her— a silent command for Ilse to sit next to her.

Ilse hesitated, complying regardless.

“My sincerest apologies for cutting our wonderful walk short Ilse, I…” the brunette found herself losing her voice as tears began to slip from her closed eyes, face contouring in pain, “...I seem to have found myself ridiculed with an odd pain in my stomach. Mother said it was an inexplicable sort of stomach sickness, though she said she planned to take me to a doctor she could actually place her trust in to get a proper diagnosis. Could we just rest for a moment? I promise we ca—“

“Wendla, don’t apologize for being ill. It’s merely something that happens to the best of us. Sit, don’t move an inch, allow yourself to recover for as long as you need,” the noirette interjected, a sympathetic smile creeping over her face as she took her spot beside her friend. The brunette opened her eyes, slowly shifting her gaze to focus on her friend. The pained tears slipping from her eyes became tears of gratitude and joy. A smile (which was more of a grimace than anything) began to blossom on her face.

“Oh, what would I ever do without you, Ilse?” asked Wendla, mirroring her question from earlier on in the day, sliding her hand over that of the aforementioned girl, acutely aware of how either of their faces were set aflame by the contact, “You're much too magnificent for me. It was nice of you to come back out to the town today and risk seeing your papa just to spend some time with me, oh, I certainly wouldn’t have had the courage to do so!

“Mama always said that being surrounded by friends and family during the festive season was one of the greatest feelings in the world,” she continued, gaze drifting to look at the way the snowflakes fell in her friend’s hair to the gloomy sky above them, “Mama said that one day I would find happiness in the holidays through a husband of my own. Is it a crazy thought that I now myself wanting to find happiness during this time of year through loving y—?”

She was interrupted by Ilse yet again, though this time not through the words which spilled from her lips, but rather her lips themselves. Heat began to course through the both of their bodies with the contact of their lips, their minds began to wander and soar with feelings they never believed possible to exist during the brief moments their lips touched, their hearts cried out in fear of how the townsfolk would react if they knew of such sinful activity, yet, at peace with how absolutely right they felt in the moment.

“Wendla, I’ve always dreamt of having you as my own,” chuckled Ilse, hazel eyes wide with disbelief in the fact that she had actually kissed someone of the same gender, “and it is outstanding, absolutely outstanding to me that you feel the same way.”

“Es ist ein Ros entsprungen,” began Wendla softly, voice sweet as she sang the classic holiday carol that seemed to fit them all too well in this moment full of newfound love and the marking of their own little spot by the lake, “Aus einer Wurzel zart!”

Ilse joined in, the only thought clear in her fuzzy mind was the desperate hope that many more moments such as this would blossom in their future, hoping that Wendla would always be happy for the—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> melchior’s chapter will be posted sometime this week, so stay tuned!!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y’all okay i proofread the lesbian chapter and bothered to shift everything into Proper English Capitals And Shit so go back and read that its better now  
> and guess what  
> i proofread this one too!! ouch my eyes too much reading :(
> 
> (also guys ive never used rich text to upload before so this is Wild)

—holidays. He had grown to absolutely despise them.

He had never much liked them for the vast majority of his life, but he really, truly hated them now, and their arrival stung him like the frigid, crisp air surrounding him. It stung the brunette’s nose to inhale, his lungs filling with the chilled air and mind filling with feelings he once believed himself to gotten rid of as he walked down the same old streets, the same old song sang this time of year lingering about the night as faint whispers in his ears. He shivered in the winter weather but could not bring himself to care, the worn overcoat hastily thrown over his shoulders undone and threatening to slide off at any given moment in favour of making a home in the snow.

Whispers of ‘Alle Jahre Wieder’ haunted him as he loomed closer and closer to his destination, the voices of the singing townsfolk gathered nearby the main buildings growing more and more distant to his ears. Taking the place of the fading song were the echoing voices of his long lost friends, joyous and laughing in the snow, the odd-haired boy grinning toothily and hurling a snowball at a squirrel at age seven—

_ (you were once so free so loose so careless what happened maybe i could have helped i miss you i miss you i) _

—and the brown-haired girl grinning with delight as she watched the snow fall around her, the cloth of her dress gathered up in her hands to keep it from dirtying in the snow. Her friends watched her, intrigued with how the snowflakes fell so carelessly from the sky and landed so perfectly in the hair of the young child, each of them wishing they could be as happy and careless as her and the snow in those fleeting moments—

_ (we all miss you you were the light of our lives please come back i was a fool i was stupid i miss you i) _

—though… perhaps none of them wanted to be much like her now. Cold, dead young and beautiful buried beneath the ground, rotting away instead of flourishing into an even prettier young woman along with everyone else she knew. None of them wanted to be like the burdened boy, either. Headless, hilarious beneath his mounds of anxiety and gone, his sad corpse now void of the sadder soul that had once been trapped within it.

He could hear them, hear how happy they once were and it hurt him. His heart ached in his chest as he walked on, eyes squinting in due to the harsh weather, and gathering tears in due to the resurgence of countless old memories. He could hear how proud the boy sounded of himself as he had finally, finally been able to pronounce some odd latin phrase correctly after hours of studying and practicing together. He could still hear the echoes of soft laughter that fell out of her even softer lips once they broke away from each other, both of their minds aflame yet airy and light, happy with one another— but not quite feeling as if they truly belonged together.

(they hadn’t, as both of them had soon discovered.)

He took to fidgeting his hands, one clutching at the innards of his coat pockets whilst the other busied itself with an old blade he carried around with him when he used to walk the streets of the city by his lonesome. He focused on the sound of the crisp snow crunching beneath his feet instead of the sound of distant memories and distant songs of jolly cheer, desperate to turn his focus to anything,  _ anything _ else. Coming back here was a mistake, he decided as he rounded the same corner he had rounded all those years ago to see them for the final time—

_ (“I’m so sorry for my much more… infrequent visits. I’ve busied myself in Munich with a job despite the hobbled mess I created here. Frau Bergmann saw mei today in the streets— she managed to recognize me after staring me down for a moment, and she gasped and sputtered, shocked that the cursed Gabor child dared to show his face around town,” the words bitterly fell from his lips, wisps of condensation accompanying them in due to the weather. It was once again the time of year where the folks gathered in the town square and sang “Alle Jahre Wieder” and countless other carols with glee as the children ran around, hurling snowballs at innocent animals and letting snowflakes collect in their hair. _

_ “I saw your father today,” he said simply, turning to the more worn of the two gravestones, “and he seemed pleasantly surprised to see me despite knowing of my, uh.. fall from grace. I will never get to know the man he was around you, my dear, but it seems like he is very resentful now and very much misses you— I miss you, too. I miss you both.” With a small smile blooming on his face, he gazed up at the stars and crawled in between the small space between the graves. He flung his arms around them both and sat there, weeping gently and murmuring memories he had woven with the both of them, sometimes with them together as a trio and sometimes with one of them individually. _

_ “Look at the stars, my friends,” he said simply, tears gathering in his eyes as he refused to blink them out, “they tell of joy and good spirits for you both wherever you are. They tell of new beginnings for me. they tell of spring…” _

_ He broke down crying, unable to get out the last word. He turned to one of the graves and fully wrapped his arms around it, vision too blurred with tears to tell which one he cried upon. The cold night air was full of the pitiful sound of the brunette’s cries, as boyish and broken as they were when he first came out to the church and mourned their deaths, nearly joining them amongst gravestones in the process. _

_ He finally pulled himself together enough to where he could stand and place the way flowers he brought on either of their graves and began to walk away. _

_ “The stars, too, they tell of spring returning,” he finally choked out, the words of departure echoing in the night air, “I too shall try to return some day. Fröhliche Weihnachten.”) _

—and he felt guilt build up inside him. He had said that he would try to return for a visit again upon his departure, and he had chosen to wait upwards of ten years to do so. 

The old church came into his view as well as all the graves behind it and he stopped dead in his tracks, unready to confront the ghosts of his past once again, even despite the fact he had been waiting so long to come and visit them once again.

With a shaky breath, he resumed his walk.

The church grew nearer until the overwhelmingly large structure loomed overhead and he glanced around wearily for anyone who may have been watching him (it was an odd hour of the night— no one would be out by the church at this time) and then slung a leg over the low fence before he swung the other one over. From there, he seemed to function on autopilot, immediately seeking out the two graves he shed many tears on over the years.

“Oh, Moritz! Wendla! How I missed you both so! Merry Christmas, many happy belated birthdays! It’s been much too long and I sincerely apologize, my wife (the word fell from his lips in a tone that seemed oddly harsh, perhaps as if he had wed because it was what was expected of him, and not what he had truly wanted for himself) had frequently caught ill over the years and the children were so bothersome that I could not find a proper time to escape!” the words flooded out of him with joy as he practically threw himself down upon the ground with their graves, “Oh, how I miss you both dearly— life is so dull without being able to talk to either of you, honestly!

“I don’t believe I can go on much longer like this,” he continued after a long pause, “You two have my sincerest thank yous for coaxing me back into life all those years ago, but perhaps life wasn’t meant to linger within me, after all? There isn’t a soul on this planet who knows fully of all the things I have done and I do not have much of a home to retreat to— Munich isn’t a home, it’s merely a chore, another task to complete. There’s no one here who can truly see to my soul and I despise this overwhelming feeling of loneliness that my mind has succumbed to. Moritz, my dear, I do believe you were right in your thinkings of an early departure, and i further believe that i understand how you felt to some extent.

“Perhaps I won’t have to linger here any longer and wish I could talk to you, my dearest Moritz, long for the late nights and early mornings of odd humour and intimate teachings, plead to once again experience how joyous you were around me and wish to once again share mother’s treats with you!” he turned his gaze to the other grave, “I wouldn’t have to yearn for your giddy speak of the holiday festivities you had planned— I always quite liked you to babble on and on about them, believe it or not! I wouldn’t have to, dare i say, pray to hear your melodious laugh or see your smile if i just.. joined you both!”

He chuckled blankly, pulling the old blade from his pocket and allowed his lips to pull back into a wistful smile as he turned his gaze up to the stars.

“They tell of the third’s coming.”

He spoke the words into the winter night with a sense of finality and the world around him seemed to go silent as he brought the blade to his throat, echoing the same, chilling dark moments of his youth. Hs shaggy curls lay wild untamed on his face as they did when he was fourteen and he smiled bitterly, a faint whisper slipping from his lips before his body went limp in the snow and his soul finally went off to rejoin his friends after years of wishing.

_ “Fröhliche Weihnachten, ich werde für die feiertage zu hause sein.” _  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ill sCaTtEr A lItTlE eArTh AnD tHaNk ThEiR gOd!!
> 
> thank u for reading, all!!  
> the german in this are mostly christmas carols!! the big scary froilcixbwehe word means merry christmas!! melchiors final words roughly translate to “merry christmas, i shall be home for the holidays”!!
> 
> also y’all my writing style is influenced by stephen king because reading it changed my life,,, the flashbacks in parenthesis are my aesthetic now im hooked


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